Andrew Korybko

Saturday August 12, 2017

Trump was more aggressive than usual yesterday when he said that he’s not ruling out a “military option” in Venezuela, and the international media went haywire speculating that the President was considering an invasion. Nothing justifies what Trump said, but taking aside all moral considerations, his statement shouldn’t have been surprising, and interestingly enough, it might even backfire on him.

All US Presidents routinely restate the rhetoric that “all options are on the table” when dealing with the crises that their country provoked abroad, which in this case is the Hybrid War on Venezuela that seeks to attain proxy control over the world’s largest oil reserves in the Orinoco River Belt and smash the socialist-multipolar ALBA grouping.

Venezuela’s preexisting socio-political vulnerabilities and institutional weaknesses were exploited by the US’ economic machinations against the country in order to trigger a Color Revolution against the government. When that failed, the regime change movement transformed into an urban insurgency and recently expanded its operations by staging a terrorist attack against a military base in the central part of the country.

It’s very likely that the situation will devolve into an externally triggered “civil war” with the eventual intent of sparking a military coup attempt against President Maduro, but the odds of the US directly intervening in this scenario are slim. Rather, Trump’s threatened “military option” probably relates to the “Lead From Behind” role that the US is slated to play in using Colombia as its regional partner for funneling weapons and other forms of assistance to the “moderate rebels” in Venezuela just as it used Turkey to do vis-a-vis Syria for the past six years.

Additionally, it can be confidently assumed that the CIA is hard at work trying to engineer its desired military coup, though the chances of its success are unlikely unless the Hybrid War becomes a full-fledged externally triggered “civil war” like in Syria. These two interconnected reasons explain what Trump meant by refusing to rule out a “military option”, though there’s admittedly the extreme case that can’t be discounted whereby a “humanitarian intervention” of varying scale is unleashed in the final stages of the crisis in order to decisively topple the government at its weakest moment.read on...

Tuesday March 10, 2015

The US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, visited Baku on 16 February as part of her trip to the Caucasus, which also saw her paying stops in Georgia and Armenia. While Azerbaijan has had positive relations with the US since independence, they’ve lately been complicated by Washington’s "pro-democracy" rhetoric and subversive actions in the country. Nuland’s visit, despite her warm words of friendship, must be look at with maximum suspicion, since it’s not known what larger ulterior motives she represents on behalf of the US government.

A Bad Omen

Nuland is most infamously known for her “Fuck the EU!” comment that was uncovered during a secretly recorded conversation with the American Ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. The two were conspiring to build a new Ukrainian government even before democratically elected (but unpopular and corrupt) president Viktor Yanukovich was overthrown by the US-supported EuroMaidan coup. Nuland played a direct role in events, not only behind the scenes, but also on the streets, since she proudly handed out cookies and other foodstuffs to the ‘protesters’ that would violently seize power just over two months later. Her role in the Ukrainian events forever marks her as an agent for US-supported regime change in the former Soviet sphere, and her visit anywhere in that space should be seen as the bad omen that it is.

Like Husband, Like Wife

Normally an individual’s personal life doesn’t have any bearing on their professional one, but in the case of Nuland, it’s the opposite because her husband is the leading neo-conservative thinker Robert Kagan. He and his ilk are known for their expertise in exploiting foreign geography to maximize US power, regardless of the regional cost.read on...